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Sunshine Cove

Sunshine Cove is a bigger cove that is heavily used by the picnic crowd. There are two parking areas. The first parking area is right before the woods, and has the easier trail down to the beach. The 2nd trail cuts through the woods. In the summer there is porta-potty in the first parking lot. Sunshine Cove is also easily recognized as it has an island in the center of the cove. The island has two distinct parts and looks like two islands at high tide. If you walk down the first trail and down to the beach, you will be in just about the right spot to swim out to a small reef that is in about 25-30 feet of water. Off to right of the reef at about 50 feet are orange sea pens and to the left of the reef at about 60 feet are sea whips. In amongst the sea pens is a good place to see Tochunia tetraquetra nudibranchs (aka orange peel) and small halibut. They like to swim a couple of inches off the bottom so the best way to spot them is to get close to the bottom and look sideways. If you want to find basket stars, look for the sea whips. The basket stars crawl up to the top of the sea whips to filter feed.